Is this one of the early fathers of Father Christmas? The carol 'Sir Christemas' from C15. Possibly 1 of the earliest personifications of Christmas. (from Oxford Bk of Carols -orig in Ritson MS)

2 weeks til Christmas - time to free Furious Santa from his box

This is on New Year's Eve Eve so I'm hoping James mentions eaves in his Christmas Lecture about ancient dwellings.

Add this to your cosy Christmas listening- an interesting chat about the paper on irish neolithic kinship that came out in the spring. Go via their website and get links to this paper and others including 'pigs and the solstice'.

7 is my current disheartening Google experience. I have research from T'internet that I now can't find via Google, even thro 'old Google' & inside quote marks. Even when still accessible direct. Google is no longer the book index at the back, it's the 3 page list of superlative quotes at the front.

Watching BBCs Buried Treasure archaeology series from the 50s. Some of the interpretations might be outdated but it's a cool watch with some great bits of footage. Wish they would put up the Avebury one though. @bbc www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p...

ONLINE WEREWOLVES! The next online presentation for @folklorelibrary.bsky.social is tomorrow night at 8pm GMT Rich Blackett will discuss folklore and myth connected with the werewolf. Online via Zoom. Tickets just £5 including video replay from bit.ly/flaevents Come and join us

Great set of folklore/hauntology speakers at this years #TheHauntedLandscape run by @forteanlondon.bsky.social I now have a lovely list of rabbit holes to go down. Next year's in my calendar already.

Bungay proving its weird credentials by featuring a 2nd time at #TheHauntedLandscape conference. First with Harte's noting of its church-ravishing devil dog. Now with @magicnotwitches.bsky.social telling of its alchemist Friar Bungay visiting cunning folk.

Interested in the Black Shuck festival? The next one is July 31st- Aug 2nd 2026. Mentioned by Jeremy Harte at @forteanlondon.bsky.social's #TheHauntedLandscape blackshuckfestival.com

Earliest chew-bacca story/lyric reference?

Context, context. Seeing this photo of 3 dog skeletons in a vague circle, my mind immediately went 'what iron age ritual is this'. But in context: "tentatively" C16 culled hounds. (Dersingham walled garden excavation, Joshua White in Medieval Settlement Research Journal 2025)

Saturday: 22 November 2025 @conwayhall.bsky.social and online. Legend trip through the Haunted Landscape at the London Fortean Society’s Day of expert talks on British ghost, magic, and folklore. Speakers and timings follow 1/10 forteanlondon.blogspot.com/2025/07/the-...

Cathedrals built on lakes, logs and prayers...

'For bright Phoebe is a-rolling to the West', part of a harvest rhyme, in LR Haggard's Norfolk poacher book 'I Walked by Night', sparked memories of my dad saying when he started working in Norfolk that the 'old boys' called the sun Phoebe.

Magic amongst Norfolk ruins. Pierced hearts, wax dolls and soot circles. From 1964 new up on BBC archive youtu.be/QWTw3xoGhg4?...

Paterson's Roads (1771–1829), perhaps the closest thing the 19th century ever got to Sat Nav, a book to guide the journeyer along the major roads of England and Wales: https://publicdomainreview.org/collection/paterson-s-roads-1826-edition

BBC Archive just uploaded The Lonely Shore (1962), a surreal 15-minute short that takes the form of a scientific report from an abandoned and desolate future Britain. Written by Jacquetta Hawkes, an actual archaeologist, and directed by Ken Russell, an actual madman.

Reading of the penance demanded for a medieval love spell where a woman gives 'bread made on her buttocks" & I have some questions. Did she have help, good reach, or is she sitting on the bread, individual buttock twerking/kneading? (In Cunning Folk by @magicnotwitches.bsky.social )

Listening to @folklorepod.bsky.social on the White Witch of Exeter and the use of 'overlook' for bewitched/evil eye. So is this why @stephenking.bsky.social's Shining hotel is called The Overlook?

Our next online talk FAIRIES, WITCH BOTTLES AND AZAZEL: British Grimoires and their Significance to the Study of Folklore Saturday 18 October, 7:30pm £5 plus booking fee bit.ly/flaevents All profits support our charity. Ticket includes talk, Q&A and recording of the event

An Ent!

Some 16th-century ballads to pen? Manipulus Vocabulorum is a rhyming dictionary from 1570, thought to be the first ever: https://publicdomainreview.org/collection/manipulus-vocabulorum-a-rhyming-dictionary-from-the-16th-century

Only just realised: Transylvania means 'beyond the woods'. It's like having had a blind spot and suddenly noticing the rabbit after decades of only seeing a duck.

"Oh Lamentable Death..." A lament found under the whitewash of Acle church seemingly from the C14 Black Death

Avebury cove, one of the stones has a small circular impression in the centre of a larger circular shape. A natural cup and ring mark? (I've been here so many times & had never even noticed this before - Avebury keeps on giving.) #standingstonesunday

Always look under your chair before sitting. #misericord

Summer haunting: Ice cream van chimes echoing through suburban streets, powered by the strong wishes of children. No ice cream van, just the chimes.

A Haunted Landscape event coming up in November. Organised by @forteanlondon.bsky.social these always have a batch of excellent speakers who know their phantasmagorical onions. www.conwayhall.org.uk/whats-on/eve...

M.R. James conference weekend coming up 23-34/8 with Romancing the Gothic. Looks like they r recording the lectures so if u sign up u can catch up later...www.tickettailor.com/events/romancingthegothic/1707567

Old notes 3: C19 Diaries of Rev Egerton: complains his singers have "not one care for music itself, only praise and pudding."

Avebury from inside the ditch. Usually the SW ditch and bank is roped off but had a lucky day when they were open. Totally different sense from inside the ditch looking up. #standingstonesunday

Old notes 2: St Christopher had a dog's head.. I know st Christopher was a major popular saint, he's on a no. of church wall paintings & probably the only St still in use (as a necklace given to those travelling) when I was a kid in a fairly non religious childhood, but don't recall his dog head

Cardiacs NEW single! Woodeneye. 17 years in the making. "...I'm sorry that I'm not here. Perhaps to be somewhere else or something else" #Cardiacs #Woodeneye youtu.be/JTRaHsKKlXA?...

Old notes 1: 'Medieval sky sailors catching their anchor in a Norwich church door'... I can only find C12-13 reports of Ireland, London, & Gervais of Tilbury on Bristol (& Kent?). But Norwich anyone?

I just found a folder of old notes from when my note records were even worse than now. What were those indecipherable pencilled words on scraps of paper I obviously thought worth keeping?

If u r interested in magic & UK history it can be striking how often it appears among elite machinations. Mythical bloodlines, the use & concern of prophets/prophecy & sorcery accusations in the War of the Roses to magical Tudor treasure hunting. So I'm looking forward to this from Frances Young

Our new book DEVON'S FORGOTTEN WITCHES 1860-1910 comes out on Aug 21 "Packed with fascinating stories and carefully researched .. important and a delight to read" @witchesetc.bsky.social We have been given permission to ship from early August, so be the first to have one! bit.ly/forgottenwitches

I'm doing an online fundraiser @folkloretodmorden.bsky.social next week, Wed 2 July. I'll look at the folklore of burn marks in ancient buildings inc experimental archaeology that shows these marks were done deliberately as protection from evil. More info: www.folkloremythmagic.com/event-detail...

Interesting short thread of another.. it 'might' be pagan, but it could also be some medieval Christian weirdery. (Or something that happens cos it happens and doesn't care what it's for).

Stop press! 📣 The @archaeologyeaa.bsky.social's European Journal of #Archaeology has gathered together some recent #openaccess articles on #prehistory for this weekend's #Prehistoric Society #Europa Conference 2025. Find them here, alongside other #Cambridge #research: ✅ cup.org/43KN3ju

I love this story. Its tragic, but the lives of the four women at its heart (the instigator, the witch, the accuser and the witchfinder) say so much about female agency in the early modern period. www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/blood-magi...

Looking forward to picking this up soon. For others interested in Cunning Folk there's also an irl and online talk by Tabitha at/via Somerset Rural Life Museum 12th June.

Four weeks tonight, Fri 23 May at 8pm, a livestreamed performance celebrating 100 years since the punblication of M R James's masterpiece "A Warning to the Curious." Register and pay-what-you-can here 100yrsofwarning.eventbrite.co.uk "He has some power over your eyes..."

History of the Witch. Free online talk on Wed 23rd April with Ron Hutton, Kounine and Blakemore.

The folk tree. An interesting dilemma for custodians of places used for folk customs E.g. this tree & Avebury's that get everything from ribbons, crystals, plastic bags and knickers tied to them. On one hand an offering, on the other detritus that someone has to clear up at the end of a long shift.

For the ghost of a duke is no more interesting than the ghost of a shoemaker. The witness to a haunting who drives a bus is no less reliable than the 14th Lord of Poncing. Inherited status is meaningless to the study of an afterlife. I’ll not tug my forelock to even a spectral king. - #CJosiffe

The Government is considering allowing AI companies to freely use your works, unless you opt-out. This is unfair and unworkable. Now is your chance to tell them what you think! Submit a response to their AI consultation using the guidance below. www.alcs.co.uk/news/your-ri...

"There were coyote tracks at the Missouri mine. They weren’t supposed to be there. No one understood how such a distant predator got in or how to keep it out.." A beautifully written piece

A folklorist explains why the Icelandic Saga's don't mention the northern lights.